Rob Roy MacGregor
December 19th, 2005, 02:07 PM
http://www.ucsj.com/stories/121405Russia.shtml
'No Non-Russians Need Apply' Advertisements Spread
(December 14, 2005)
Paul Goble
Tallinn, December 14 - Classified advertising circulars, the most widely distributed publications in the Russian Federation today, have begun featuring ads in some markets specifying that their offerings are "for Russians only" and that "no non-Russians need apply."
Last month, leaders of the Muslim Spiritual Directorate (MSD) of Karelia complained to prosecutors in Petrozavodsk that such advertising, which now appears in two local circulars there, was violating Russian law by insulting their dignity. The MSD said that if prosecutors did not act, Muslim groups would launch civil suits.
Now this "scandal" has reached the much larger media market of St. Petersburg, according to a report in yesterday's "Izvestiya Peterburg," and Muslim groups there are demanding that prosecutors take action or face the prospect that the city's courts will be flooded with civil suits as well (http://religare.ru/print23840.htm ).
Such advertising, the paper noted, is not only insulting and illegal but potentially explosive in Russian cities whose populations are increasingly diverse in ethnic and religious terms. In St. Petersburg, for example, every sixth resident is a non-Russian, according to official data. And these groups are increasingly well organized.
Of the 112 different ethnic groups there, 13 have officially registered status as national cultural autonomies, and approximately 60 have formed their own and often large ethically-based societies. If members of these groups feel that officials are tolerating such ads, the paper suggested, there is likely to be trouble.
In addition, there is another very real basis for such concerns. At the end of the Soviet period, newspapers began running personal advertisements as a service to their readers. Initially, these ads contained the same kind of information typically found in their analogues in Western papers - age, profession, and interests.
But by the late 1980s, some Soviet publications allowed those using this kind of dating service to specify not only their own ethnic group but also the ethnic group whose members they would like to meet. Relatively few non-Russians paid much attention to these ads at the time, but those that did were infuriated.
They saw such specifications as evidence of what Russians really thought about them and as an indication that official professions of "friendship of the peoples" notwithstanding, there was no chance that members of these various groups could actually live together in a single state.
Now, in publications that reach not a relatively small audience but one numbering in the millions, ever more non-Russians again see evidence of what they are certain to conclude at least some Russians really think about them whatever they and Russian officials say in public.
And if Russian prosecutors do not act to enforce Russian law on this point - and "Izvestiya Peterburg" reported that these officials have not yet done so either in Karelia or in St. Petersburg - then such feelings are likely to be exacerbated with potentially fateful consequences for all concerned.
'No Non-Russians Need Apply' Advertisements Spread
(December 14, 2005)
Paul Goble
Tallinn, December 14 - Classified advertising circulars, the most widely distributed publications in the Russian Federation today, have begun featuring ads in some markets specifying that their offerings are "for Russians only" and that "no non-Russians need apply."
Last month, leaders of the Muslim Spiritual Directorate (MSD) of Karelia complained to prosecutors in Petrozavodsk that such advertising, which now appears in two local circulars there, was violating Russian law by insulting their dignity. The MSD said that if prosecutors did not act, Muslim groups would launch civil suits.
Now this "scandal" has reached the much larger media market of St. Petersburg, according to a report in yesterday's "Izvestiya Peterburg," and Muslim groups there are demanding that prosecutors take action or face the prospect that the city's courts will be flooded with civil suits as well (http://religare.ru/print23840.htm ).
Such advertising, the paper noted, is not only insulting and illegal but potentially explosive in Russian cities whose populations are increasingly diverse in ethnic and religious terms. In St. Petersburg, for example, every sixth resident is a non-Russian, according to official data. And these groups are increasingly well organized.
Of the 112 different ethnic groups there, 13 have officially registered status as national cultural autonomies, and approximately 60 have formed their own and often large ethically-based societies. If members of these groups feel that officials are tolerating such ads, the paper suggested, there is likely to be trouble.
In addition, there is another very real basis for such concerns. At the end of the Soviet period, newspapers began running personal advertisements as a service to their readers. Initially, these ads contained the same kind of information typically found in their analogues in Western papers - age, profession, and interests.
But by the late 1980s, some Soviet publications allowed those using this kind of dating service to specify not only their own ethnic group but also the ethnic group whose members they would like to meet. Relatively few non-Russians paid much attention to these ads at the time, but those that did were infuriated.
They saw such specifications as evidence of what Russians really thought about them and as an indication that official professions of "friendship of the peoples" notwithstanding, there was no chance that members of these various groups could actually live together in a single state.
Now, in publications that reach not a relatively small audience but one numbering in the millions, ever more non-Russians again see evidence of what they are certain to conclude at least some Russians really think about them whatever they and Russian officials say in public.
And if Russian prosecutors do not act to enforce Russian law on this point - and "Izvestiya Peterburg" reported that these officials have not yet done so either in Karelia or in St. Petersburg - then such feelings are likely to be exacerbated with potentially fateful consequences for all concerned.